You should read Dwayne's article, but you should also know that the MOMENT I figure out how to blow up Phobos I'm gonna do it

New in the shop: #Voyager socks 🛰 It feels like I've been wanting to make these for almost as long as Voyager has been in space (48 years lol!) Featuring the spacecraft, the #GoldenRecord, and their trajectories past the outer planets 🤩 🔗 sciencesocks.co/prod...#Voyager#GoldenRecord,🔭🐡🧪🎨

A livestream of a volcano in the Philippines captured a meteor crashing to Earth today. What are the odds? Mayon Volcano, Location: Albay, Luzon, Philippines

A huge mess behind the scenes and hardly anyone is talking about it..

Ship made it to the Indian Ocean. They skipped the engine relight they'd planned bc of the engine failure, but it deployed the 20 Starlink simulators and two others and "splashed down" in the Indian Ocean, bursting into a fireball when it hit the water as it does.

Starship Flight 12 test. Some success, but missed a key milestone. The splashdown was spectacular:

Blue Origin completes investigation into New Glenn launch failure Blue Origin has completed the investigation into the failure on the third flight of its New Glenn rocket, clearing launches of the vehicle to resume.

Worked at JPL while studying at Caltech back in the early 1990s. This is a nightmare-level theft of a planetary science & exploration powerhouse. It makes no sense whatsoever. Republicans' continued vandalism of NASA's science centers is intolerable.

NASA is opening up management of JPL to competitive bidding for the first time in its history, forcing Caltech to compete for control of the lab it’s run since 1958. The current contract is worth up to $30B and runs through 2028. www.latimes.com/science/stor...

Not a good launch for Starship today. You'll see SpaceX and pundits try and paint it as a good one, but it missed multiple critical milestones today for future missions. Complete loss of control of booster after stage separation, loss of engine and trajectory on ship, and cancellation of relight.

Goodbye Mars Image captured by the Psyche spacecraft on May 19, four days after the flyby. #Psyche #Mars 🧪🔭

Mars as seen from the Psyche spacecraft on its way to the metallic asteroid of the same name.

Mars' southern hemisphere from the departing Psyche spacecraft on May 16th. flic.kr/p/2sdXi1n

Meanwhile in Massachusetts: the library begins the first step of its transatlantic journey...

A number of you have been wondering about the progress of my library relocation project. After a year of very slow progress behind the scenes, things are starting to move. The new library space is in Bromley, south of London; the waterproofing of the space is now complete

ESA chief Josef Aschbacher has called on Europe to develop an autonomous human spaceflight capability, arguing the continent has "become too exposed to decisions beyond its control." europeanspaceflight.com/autonomous-h...

1/x Navigational Warnings for the #Starship FT-12 launch show that it takes a more southern trajectory than previous Starship flights, south of Cuba instead of north. Comparison of FT-12 (blue) to FT-11 (red):

The launch was just the beginning. What's next for Inspector Smile? During the next month, 11 engine burns will bring her 121 000 km above the North Pole. From there, she will collect data, before descending to 5000 km above the South Pole to deliver it. Data collection begins in July. 🔭 🧪 🌞

ESA-China SMILE mission lifts off to deliver first global images of Earth’s magnetosphere The SMILE mission developed jointly by the European Space Agency and China has reached orbit after more than a decade of preparations and cooperation.

The Artemis II Orion capsule separating from the European Service module (now from two angles) 4K resolution: youtu.be/_QelA8UonoQ

The post-eruption road to Moana Loa Observatory reopened two months ago -- but the bigger deal is NOAA publicly recommitting to the previous planned renovations. This is home to the famous Keeling Curve measuring CO2 rise, of course.

Recent changes to the Artemis architecture signal a rapidly shifting landscape in human space exploration, underscoring a broader reality: Europe has become too exposed to decisions beyond its control. Read my latest article: www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-pil...

Gunter's Space Page is now 30 years old!!! While I can not pinpoint the exact day, my oldest back up files hint for a beginning in May 1996. Starting as an "external memory", my website has apparently become some kind of industry standard. space.skyrocket.de

This is the money paragraph for me.

Mars - Clouds over Terra Cimmeria - ESA Mars Express HRSC Full size 5k image: flic.kr/p/2sdpsHP 🔭🧪 Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY 2025-07-24 South is up HR211_0000 ND3+GR3+BL3

The full image is much larger, though the compression on BlueSky doesn’t really work properly anymore. You can see the full resolution Flickr flic.kr/p/2sdpsHP 🔭🧪

Space rendezvous and docking assisted by extensible booms: selenianboondocks.com/2009/11/boom... This is just a sensible replacement to a process that's been slow, dangerous and complicated for decades now.

Back to work at LC-36 this week and let me tell you it is a sight to see! For the first time two New Glenn rockets are in flow simultaneously, "Never Tell Me The Odds" is undergoing refurbishment for its third mission, with "No, It's Necessary" being prepared for its maiden flight!

"Since the early 2000s, a majority of recovered space debris contains either carbon fiber-reinforced plastic sections or metal components wrapped with carbon fiber. The carbon fiber can act as an unintentional heat shield for heavier, more harmful debris" theconversation.com/falling-spac...

"The study describes it as the first measurement of upper-atmospheric pollution resulting from space debris reentry, and the first observational evidence that space-debris ablation can be detected by ground-based lidar." spacedaily.com/sd-n-a-falco...

Today marks Nakba Day, an annual day of remembrance to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed.   Inea is a New Yorker and a Nakba survivor. She shared her story with us.

Cool video of the Artemis II Orion capsule separating from the European Service Module. This footage is from the GoPro HERO4 Black cameras installed on the ESM's solar arrays. The wobble in the second shot is from the jolt imparted to the ESM as Orion separates. Credit: NASA

"Indian mega projects often travel under mixed labels because once the security frame is attached, scrutiny becomes harder. Opposition can be dismissed as naïve, anti-development or even unpatriotic."

"A strategic location is not the same thing as a project of any size or form, and certainly not when that is mostly a large commercial project. The two are being confused on purpose to invoke national security and shout down any valid objections." I write in The Morning Context on Great Nicobar

Good old 64467 - Kosmos 2589 having "fun" (and yes me having fun with my new satinfo toy, 1 year ago I was still muttering around in python looking at Kosmos 2558 bsky.app/profile/dutc...)

Some rocks and sand. Some rocks and sand on Mars. The analysis of which is labs on Earth would give us vital information about the history of Mars, the impact bombardment of the inner Solar System, and the risks astronauts will face on the Red Planet and how we can mitigate them.

DoJ set to drop fraud charges against a billionaire from India after the defendant hired one of President Trump’s lawyers and offered to invest $10 billion in the US economy. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/n...

Loss of a strategic European ground-station is what I call it.

I finally got a statement from NASA. A representative from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which is responsible for developing LISA's telescopes, said the agency remains committed to its contributions but did not address the funding issue.

Unclear what is happening with the VardaSpace W-4 reentry. The W-4 spacecraft made a manuever on May 10 to lower orbit from 284 x 835 km to 162 x 820 km. At the same time a new object, catalog 69094, was found in a 157 x 735 km orbit

JAXA’s Hayabusa2 is gearing up for a high‑speed flyby of asteroid Torifune 🛰️. Your challenge: imagine (and terrify the team) what it might look like! 🔭 In return, try a #VR ride with the spacecraft. JAXA is seeking regional hosts for these events—museums, schools & space-y orgs 🧪, do check it out!

NASA confirmed *some* Artemis III mission plans today, namely that the SLS rocket won't have a propulsive upper stage but a "spacer" instead. But we still don't much about what's going to happen when Orion docks with SpaceX and/or Blue Origin's landers www.nasa.gov/missions/art...

“Where is the pool of men who are self-sufficient and like to read, are willing to go to therapy and are not afraid of a woman who has a passport? That sounds really wild to say out loud, but I don’t feel like I’m missing a ton by choosing to read a book instead of swiping on Hinge.”

My new article is up: thespacereview.com/article/5220/1

Cleaning the basement and remembering when I did art

This is incredible - you can sometimes see bugs/insects on weather radar! Apparently they organize in zones of rising air, so they make it possible to understand localized atmospheric movements!

The patch for the Shenzhou-23 mission, launching in a few weeks, has a 'Bauhinia x blakeana' on the left side, likely indicating that a taikonaut selected from Hong Kong is aboard, as it is the city's emblematic flower.

End of the term and among my reflections is this — Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is a great text to teach in 2026 America. Students see all kinds of parallels and connections with their lives. And, separately, it gives them a meaty introduction to the intellectual life of 20th-century India.